


For a Given Definition

by yet_intrepid



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Flying Dutchman, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insomnia, Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 06:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: Will's always prided himself on being resourceful, clever, and determined. But tonight, bleeding and worn in the hold of the Dutchman, he wishes he didn't have to be.





	For a Given Definition

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2019, I haven't posted fic in six months, and I return crying about Will Turner. Don't ask me to explain, friends. Just join me.
> 
> (Working title was "sad hammock times," and I hit a point where I was very tempted to give up and just stick that in the title field lmao)

It’s been a while since Will’s been in this position, trying to ignore the aftermath of a beating so he could get enough sleep for the next day’s work. He used to be good at it, back when old Brown had been more of a mean drunk than a sleepy one, and when Will was still small enough to pin down without much trouble.

So, a good five or six years. But he would be managing fine, he’s sure, if not for the fact that being in this position currently means being in a hammock.

Will shifts ever so slightly. The itch and scrape of the rope webbing is digging at his torn-up back, even through his vest, but at the same time he can’t afford to move too much. If the cuts aren’t scabbed over by morning, they’re going to bleed all day.

For a given definition of day. There’s no bells to keep track of time here, to keep sane, and there’s little enough sunlight either.

Will wonders how long it’s safe to lie here. There’s no one else in the hammocks, after all, so his father escorting him here can’t have been strictly sanctioned. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? The men on this ship—they’re between life and death. It doesn’t matter if they don’t sleep or eat or drink. They can still work. They can still go on.

Will, though. Will’s as alive as he’s ever been, but there are certain things he’ll have to get in order to stay that way.

But he can’t think about that, not now, not if he wants any chance at sleep. He shifts just a fraction more, biting down on his lip so he won’t whimper like a child, and squeezes his eyes tighter.

His eyelids can’t stop it all from playing back, jumbled and strange.

Compassion, his father had said at the end of it, and Will hates that he can believe that. It could’ve been worse; it could’ve been more. It could’ve cut to the bone, like his father said, leaving him unable to drag himself away from the mast.

But it could not have cut closer to his heart.

It was one thing to learn his father is a pirate. It’s entirely another to—to find him alive, and be defended by him, and then this.

He shouldn’t think about that either, really. But his mind just won’t do him the kindness of slowing, and his body won’t show him the mercy of sleep. There is something inside him that’s fourteen years old again, sore from the blacksmith’s belt and lying awake to imagine that, although he’d set out to find his father, it’d be his father who would find him instead.

Will’s mouth is painfully dry, but his eyes still manage to be damp.

The hammock rocks a little wilder, scratches a little rougher. There’s still blood trickling steady from the lashes, and Will scolds himself for hoping they’d scab over by the time he’s back abovedeck. There’s no use in that, no use in any hope that doesn’t move him towards a plan.

But he doesn’t want to plan. Not right now. He doesn’t want to come up with something daring and ingenious to get himself out of this hell. In the morning, in a day or so, he’ll find the nerve to want it, or to do it even if he doesn’t want to.

But not tonight, for a given definition of night. Tonight, he just wants to be rescued, because he’s tired of rescuing himself.


End file.
